PURPLE HEART - Soliders Of Fortune [BOOK TWO]

Chapter TWENTY

Maksimillian 'Max' Angeloff

Sunday flinches, her gentle features twitching into a contorted grimace every time a round is fired.. Which here at the range is about once every six seconds.. The girl is flighty, on edge and absolutely terrified, which only piles atop the mountain of guilt I sit on as I prepare her for what is yet to come.. But despite her rattled nerves she tries her hardest to pay attention as I demonstrate a run through of how to clear the chamber and reload her chosen Makarov iron..

In what feels like a cruel twist of coincidence, Sunday had selected the very same pistol my ex-wife had given to me on our wedding day, along with a promise..

Until death..

Imagine my surprise when a year later Sofiya would take that same gun and try to blow my brains out.. I had kept it as a reminder to never forget the bitter cut of betrayal..

I should have known not to trust Sofi, ever since we were young she'd had this pathological ability to spin and weave a web of rumour and riot.. But she was a gangland kid like me, growing up surrounded by violence and war had bonded us in some sick way, and for the longest time she felt like the only thing keeping me afloat in a sea of loneliness..

Sofiya was the first person to tell me that she loved me.. I'd never heard those words spoken before or felt the lingering embrace of their warmth.. And because I had been so starved for that to be true, I had deluded myself into ignoring her flaws.

But all of it was just another one of Sasha's games.. He has always been a chess master.. A fucking magician of mindfuck.. A devil in disguise.. I had no idea he was whisperings in Sofi's ear all those years, making her promises he had no intention of keeping and turning her against me with his lies..

Convincing me to marry Sofiya so young was my father's cruellest torment of all.. He knew she would be just another means to control me.. To keep me close to home and prevent me from re-upping my enlistment to escape his reach..

Sasha knew the more people I cared for, the more susceptible I would become to his blackmail.. And he knew all along Sofi was a weapon of mass destruction, set to burn my world to ash... Hell, he designed it..

It's easy in hindsight to say that I never should have agreed to meet with her that cold winter's night al those years ago.. After I uncovered all her lying and cheating, I should have been colder, callous and cruel.. Sofi and Neeves deserved each other, two snakes in a cesspit of their own making, and I should have been smart enough to see through their scheming betrayals and ideations of climbing the rungs of Sasha's criminal empire together..

But I had been blinded by loyalty and trust.. Brainwashed into a dulled state of complicity..

Back then, I didn't suspect that my wife would fuck my best friend behind my back.. I didn't think they would plot to eliminate me in order to clear their way to the top.. And I sure as shit didn't know the mastermind of the whole nefarious plan was my own father..